Google Climbs to the Heavens for Joust With Amazon

Google Compute Engine -- whose logo was immortalized in this cafe latte -- is having a right go at Amazon. Image: yukop/Flickr

Sebastian Stadil once lived at the Rainbow Mansion, the Silicon Valley tech collective that also provided a roof for some of the key minds behind an open source software creation called OpenStack. And he very much believes in what OpenStack is trying to do: provide a viable alternative to EC2 and other cloud services operated by the mighty Amazon. The irony is that he doesn’t necessarily believe in OpenStack itself.

The best hope for a serious challenge to Amazon, Stadil says, is Google.

Earlier this year, Google unveiled a “preview’ version of a service that mimics Amazon EC2, providing instant access to virtual servers where you can run almost any software you want, and the search giant was already offering several other web services that directly compete with Amazon, including one where you can store massive amounts of data.

But this week, if it wasn’t already apparent, Google showed that it’s wholly committed to competing with Amazon, whose cloud services now run an estimated one percent of the internet. On Monday, with Amazon on the eve of opening its first conference dedicated to EC2 and its other web services, Google slashed the prices on its competitor — the Google Compute Engine — and when Amazon dropped the prices on its S3 storage service, Google did the same with its own storage service, Google Cloud Storage. For Sebastian Stadil, this sort of gamesmanship is just what the computing world needs.

Stadil runs a company called Scalr — an outfit that helps businesses manage their use of Amazon EC2 and other cloud services — and like many outfits that run software atop Amazon, he wants a competitor that can keep Amazon honest. “If there’s a single cloud, that cloud will have unimaginable power over everyone in the ecosystem…like Twitter had over its clients,” he says. Twitter has been known to freeze out software applications that tie into its service, unwilling to let them compete with its own software tools.

Yes, OpenStack is already driving many cloud services, including those offered by Rackspace, the Texas outfit that helped found the open source project. But Stadil — who’s also the founder of the Silicon Valley Cloud Computing Group — says that today’s OpenStack services are a step below what you get from Amazon. “I don’t see any reason to choose Rackspace. AWS is superior in every way that counts,” he says — though he adds that he hopes this will change.

He sees GCE very differently. After a few months of testing, he believes the Google Compute Engine trumps Amazon EC2 in multiple ways. According to benchmarks run by Scalr, virtual servers boot 4 to 10 times faster than on EC2, and in some cases, you can move data onto Google’s services as much as 20 times faster.

That said, Stadil points out that Google is still in “preview” mode — and that his tests may not represent what you’ll get when the service launches to the world at large. And he still questions whether Google is suited to running the sort of low-margin business that GCE boils down to — despite this week’s battle of the price cuts. Amazon has a long history of running such businesses. It’s an online retailer.

In any event, the war is on. And though Stadil downplays them, there are many others looking to have as say in this tussle, including Rackspace, countless other OpenStackers, and Microsoft’s recently-revamped Windows Azure.

Part of the appeal of OpenStack is that it’s open source used by multiple services, says Nicolas Marchal, the chief technology officer of eNovance, a French company that helps other outfits build OpenStack services. This means, he says, that it will let you can more easily move applications from one service to another.

Many agree with him. including HP’s Biri Singh, who is overseeing a new HP new cloud service based on OpenStack. Others, like Sebastian Stadil, downplay this argument. But one thing’s for sure: Amazon is no longer alone.

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